Beets and Winston Churchill

[mallorys_camera]

I was deeply saddened by Sabine's news… breast cancer. One wants to throw some sort of Mantle of Protection over the Good People. It's very frustrating that one can't. I was thinking yesterday that I'm not attached to being alive in the slightest. I don't mean I'm depressed — although I do think I am working waaay too hard. My ground state,as I've noted before, is a kind of detachment that many might describe as melancholy, though I personally don't. There are many beautiful moments, pleasant moments. But if the plug got pulled tomorrow, I wouldn't care. Why can't I trade that, give the gift of being alive to someone who would treasure it more than I do?

Speaking of pleasant moments – Allan and Cassandra cooked this meal last night that was beyond spectacular. Started with a beet salad with goat cheese, caramelized walnuts and a balsamic vinaigrette, and proceeded to homemade taquitos. Insanely good. Quick caramelizing trick for the walnuts: Toast them and then when they're still warm, saturate them with pure maple syrup. I suppose technically that's not caramelizing.

I fell on those beets like a starving person. I suppose there was some nutrient in them that my body just craved.

I've been reading biographies of Winston Churchill. Not really sure how I got onto this kick. There is an ancient library book on Cassandra's shelves about the Churchills that traces the family back to their first investiture in nobility back in the times of Queen Anne. It's a very odd family, made up mostly of dullards, boors and mean, vindictive people. Evelyn Waugh's famous quip – "It was a typical triumph of modern science to find the one part of Randolph which was not malignant and to remove it" – was actually made about Winston's son.

Once every 100 years or so, however, the family produced someone who stood head and shoulders above everyone else. Such a person was Winston Churchill.

History has a way of creating the forces it needs to move in certain directions. There are very few human beings who buck the trend. But I honestly believe that Winston Churchill was one of the few human beings who actually shaped history. Without Winston Churchill, I think Hitler would have conquered Europe. World culture would have devolved into Hitler's peculiar Wagnerian blend of nightmare. Churchill singlehandedly saved Western Civilization, as we know it.

Comments

[cwmackowski.livejournal.com]

Churchill is good stuff. So are beets, for that matter.

Sorry to hear about your friend. Good luck.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Congrats again on the PhD! Impressive, very.

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

Churchill's 4 book History of an English Speaking People is a great read. I love his sense of humor.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

That's the work he won the Nobel Prize for Literature for, isn't it? I am going to read it after I finish the Manchester biography.

All the Brits who shared that educational niche had terrific senses of humor, I think. Very dry. Very... gramatical.

[lethe1]

Thank you! I fully intend to stay alive, albeit with a little less mass. :)

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Yes. I insist upon it! :-)

[anais-pf.livejournal.com]

The recipe (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/beet-salad-with-goat-cheese/detail.aspx) calls them "candied walnuts." You need to continue cooking the walnuts a little bit until the maple syrup is somewhat reduced. I think there are enough leftover ingredients for an encore salad -- maybe Thursday. :-)

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Beets! :-)

[nokomisjeff.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of two of his most witty quotes.

"Sir, if you were my husband, I would poison your drink." said Lady Astor to Winston Churchill. His reply, "Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it."

"Mr. Churchill, you're drunk!" said Lady Astor to Winston Churchill who tartly replied, "Yes, and you, Madam, are ugly. But tomorrow, I shall be sober."

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Churchill was brilliant. And firmly believed that if yu weren't making enemies, you were doing something wrong.

[katestine.livejournal.com]

I don't think of myself as particularly depressed, but I'm not sure I'd much mind if my plug got pulled tomorrow. I've got more I want to do, but I've done all sorts of fun things, I've had a good run.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Interesting. You haven't reproduced yet, and my understanding was that you wanted to. Has that changed? That's really the big experience in life -- apologies to my non-breeder friends, but it's true.

[katestine.livejournal.com]

I do want to reproduce, mostly bc I think I have great genetic material and I want to see if any of my child-rearing theories hold up. I also think having children will make me more attached to life.

[bel-ebat.livejournal.com]

i went to blenheim palace a few years ago in the summer. the current duke was wandering around and asked my brother and i how we were enjoying ourselves. not that we KNEW who he was until an employee told us.

the same employee gleefully told us that the queen has never visited the place, and that this is a huge, noted, public diss. while we were walking away, my brother (who was 16 at the time) said, "if the queen hasn't been here maybe we shouldn't be here."

randolph is all over mitford correspondence. the whole tone is, "oh, he's so horrible! he's such a drunk! he was so mean and abusive to so-and-so! but we love him over-all, right?"

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I hope I get to see Blenheim Palace before I die! Also Chartwell now that I've become a Churchill fanatic. I think I am falling in love with Churchill by the way. :-)

Randolph would seem to be a throwback to the more ordinary type of Churchill. I just finished a book that you might like: Amanada Mackenzie Stuart, Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt. I expect you know the Consuelo Vanderbilt story generally. She was an early Jackie Kennedy prototype. Her first husband was Winston's cousin, the reigning -- sitting? -- Duke of Marlborough. A crashing boor, and utterly stupid. One wonders how the same set of DNA could have produced him and Winston. I guess Jennie Jerome provided hybrid vigor.

The gentleman you and yr brother met prowling in the garden would have been either Consuelo's grandson or great grandson.

[bel-ebat.livejournal.com]

i think winston churchill is a wonderful dead person to fall in love with. :)

added to my list! i do know the very general stories of both consuelo and jennie but would love to learn more, especially about consuelo. i will eat anything of that sort like candy! a quick look at his wiki intro says he is consuelo's grandson—i know i will enjoy thinking about that whenever i start reading.

[bel-ebat.livejournal.com]

*particularly wonderful, i meant to write.

[ch.livejournal.com]

maybe i've had one too many beers, but i think we cerebral people have a different relationship with depression.

it's not one dimensional for us, like it is for many folks.

it's more like we operate on a different plane from it -- we maintain a vary distance from it most of the time. but the plane is not Euclid's plane. it has holes in it and we we can fall through one and be with in a fraction of depression in a moment.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

For me it's an almost Alice In Wonderland trick of going back and forth between the overview and the context more quickly than other people, I guess.

I can't really articulate it very well.

But often I look at the struggles, the little glories, the sharp but essentially small disappointments of my own rather unimportant life, and I see them in the context of all human life -- as though I'm looking at some sort of vast coral reef, the accretion of all these innumerable human lives. (I'm know I'm being very inarticulate here, and I don't even have beer as an excuse.) And I just don't feel very attached to that coral reef.